: Silmarillion Fan Wank, for your perusal.
Okay, disclaimer: I have always frankly avoided the Tolkien fan community like a plague, even though I really do like the books and, yes, even the movies (for the most part). But I poke around in it every once in a while looking for good fanfiction, which I rarely find, although I do find an awful lot of wank.
The wank which follows is actually not a wank by LOTR fanfic writers, but by -Silmarillion- fan fiction writers, who, from all I can tell, are something of a breed apart, distinguished by less Mary Sue and fangirl wanking and much more pseudointellectual wanking, and an overwhelming inability to take their fandom in any spirit which is not one of dead seriousness. The initiator of the wank, Rose, starts out by commenting on a piece of fan fiction by P@L, the board maintainer, and immediately turns it into a discussion about God and human suffering and how fan fiction is apparently immensely relevant to this issue. P@L responds by lecturing Rose on how LOTR apparently does a better job of justifying the ways of God to man than the Bible does: "and the dual facts that Arda *is* Arda Marred and that the actual design and construction of it was carried out by semi-competent demiurges while under attack by yet other semi-competent anti-demiurges "explains" a tremendous amount about the problems in it." (Unfortunately, no one in this thread does a very good job of "explaining" themselves in any way.)
It then becomes a discussion about the Book of Job. Remember, we're -Silmarillion- fanfic writers, not like all those LOTR-fic-writing plebes, so trust us, this stuff IS immensely relevant here! P@L then proceeds to ninja-wank-attack Rose's response to the Job post, informing her that obviously she hasn't -lived- through tests of her faith because she hasn't suffered enough; ergo, shut the hell up and bow before my overwhelmingly superior wisdom. Unfortunately, however, Rose is not prepared to turn the conversation into a Super-Saiyan-Wank catfight about faith and philosophy, so P@L does it for her, accusing Rose of employing "passive-aggressive apologetics" and that she embodies the "human tendency to make facile dismissals of whoever opposes them, employing caricature and straw-man rebuttals." (The possibility that a facile dismissal might be in order when all the participants in an argument are wanking themselves into self-justifying ridiculousness is not addressed.)
Rose then begins to show the only common sense thus far demonstrated in the thread: "There comes a point at which further discussion on a topic is useless." (For FanPatricians? Perish the thought!) Naturally, P@L disagrees, and comes back with What in fact has been done is a passive-aggressive, hit-and-run bit of self-indulgence: by doing so, one can feel proud of having done one's part of "standing up for" what one believes in, without actually having had to deal with any of the necessary consequences, and without actually having done anything constructive - yet still begin able to pat one's self on the back for being brave and even persecuted." (Funny, and here I thought they were all just were just engaging in standard fan pseudointellectualism. I had no idea anyone was martyring themselves for a cause here.)
Also, according to a thread further down, "The Last Unicorn" is apparently the best Silmarillion fanfiction ever. Apparently I'm just too plebe to figure out the reasoning behind this one, being not part of the fandom myself.
Doubtless there's more wank on the board, further down, but my head hurts from pounding it against my monitor at this point.
Okay, disclaimer: I have always frankly avoided the Tolkien fan community like a plague, even though I really do like the books and, yes, even the movies (for the most part). But I poke around in it every once in a while looking for good fanfiction, which I rarely find, although I do find an awful lot of wank.
The wank which follows is actually not a wank by LOTR fanfic writers, but by -Silmarillion- fan fiction writers, who, from all I can tell, are something of a breed apart, distinguished by less Mary Sue and fangirl wanking and much more pseudointellectual wanking, and an overwhelming inability to take their fandom in any spirit which is not one of dead seriousness. The initiator of the wank, Rose, starts out by commenting on a piece of fan fiction by P@L, the board maintainer, and immediately turns it into a discussion about God and human suffering and how fan fiction is apparently immensely relevant to this issue. P@L responds by lecturing Rose on how LOTR apparently does a better job of justifying the ways of God to man than the Bible does: "and the dual facts that Arda *is* Arda Marred and that the actual design and construction of it was carried out by semi-competent demiurges while under attack by yet other semi-competent anti-demiurges "explains" a tremendous amount about the problems in it." (Unfortunately, no one in this thread does a very good job of "explaining" themselves in any way.)
It then becomes a discussion about the Book of Job. Remember, we're -Silmarillion- fanfic writers, not like all those LOTR-fic-writing plebes, so trust us, this stuff IS immensely relevant here! P@L then proceeds to ninja-wank-attack Rose's response to the Job post, informing her that obviously she hasn't -lived- through tests of her faith because she hasn't suffered enough; ergo, shut the hell up and bow before my overwhelmingly superior wisdom. Unfortunately, however, Rose is not prepared to turn the conversation into a Super-Saiyan-Wank catfight about faith and philosophy, so P@L does it for her, accusing Rose of employing "passive-aggressive apologetics" and that she embodies the "human tendency to make facile dismissals of whoever opposes them, employing caricature and straw-man rebuttals." (The possibility that a facile dismissal might be in order when all the participants in an argument are wanking themselves into self-justifying ridiculousness is not addressed.)
Rose then begins to show the only common sense thus far demonstrated in the thread: "There comes a point at which further discussion on a topic is useless." (For FanPatricians? Perish the thought!) Naturally, P@L disagrees, and comes back with What in fact has been done is a passive-aggressive, hit-and-run bit of self-indulgence: by doing so, one can feel proud of having done one's part of "standing up for" what one believes in, without actually having had to deal with any of the necessary consequences, and without actually having done anything constructive - yet still begin able to pat one's self on the back for being brave and even persecuted." (Funny, and here I thought they were all just were just engaging in standard fan pseudointellectualism. I had no idea anyone was martyring themselves for a cause here.)
Also, according to a thread further down, "The Last Unicorn" is apparently the best Silmarillion fanfiction ever. Apparently I'm just too plebe to figure out the reasoning behind this one, being not part of the fandom myself.
Doubtless there's more wank on the board, further down, but my head hurts from pounding it against my monitor at this point.
annoyed